I thought Frank Deford's piece, "The Rabbit Hunter," was interesting. Frank Deford threw in some dialog from infamous college basketball coach Bob Knight that blew my mind. For example, when Knight throws a zinger at Indiana women's basketball coach Maryalyce Jeremiah:
Knight walks down to the other end of the scorer's table. "Hey, Maryalyce."
Brightly: "Yes, Bobby?"
"You know what a dab is?"
"A what?"
"A dab--D-A-B."
"No, what's that?"
"It's a dumb-assed broad," he says, smirking.
"I don't know any of those," she replies -- a pretty quick comeback.
But he won't leave it alone. The edge, again: "Yeah, you know one more than you think you do."
Are you kidding me? How golden of a quote is that?! Like it or not, that is a raw detail and it is one of the reasons I kept reading until the end.
This piece wasn't as great as it could have been based simply upon the structure of it.
Starting at the beginning, the quote from William Faulkner doesn't need to be there, in my opinion. In a way it contributes to this piece, particularly in the sense of physical abuse and Bob Knight. For me, though, it was a little distracting and unnecessary. Maybe something a little more sports related and less about spousal abuse?
Then there are four sections of the piece: Rabbits, Coaches, Older People, and Women.
I think the piece could have been broken up into three sections. I think it could have flowed nicely as one whole piece. If [Deford] had taken the Older People section and shrunk it down a bit, then made it part of the Rabbit section, it would have flowed nicely. The way those two sections kind of work together, to establish who Bobby is, where he comes from, and just why he acts like he does. The other sections kind of stand by themselves and don't really need much adjustment as far as placement.
No comments:
Post a Comment